Meet Your Maker: Made By White

Recently I was lucky enough to get a hold of the dynamo sister team Kelly and Lyndsay, to chat to them about their impressive jewellery label Made By White.

S: Hi Guys! Thanks for taking the time to do this. First of all, who is Made By White?

MBW: Made By White is two sisters, Lyndsay and Kelly White from Sydney, Australia. We Design, laser cut and hand make everything we do!
 

S: What’s it like being sisters and running a business together? 

MBW: Being sisters and working together is great. We both have similar ideas and interests and we manage to combine our ideas into a brand we both love. We like animals, colour, fairytales, quirky creatures and basically anything cute, and we think our brand reflects that!
 

S: Tell us a little bit about your background. What path has led you to what you do now? 

MBW: We both have design backgrounds and have always been creative for as long as we can remember, due to our mum's continuous crafting when we were little. Currently Lyndsay is a web designer extraordinaire by day (www.whitepixels.com) and Kelly works in a small design boutique a few days a week too(www.made590.com.au). We both have side projects we create as well as making Made By White together which gives us both an opportunity to make something completely ours!

Kelly's project is The Storybook Rabbit (www.thestorybookrabbit.com) which combines her love of vintage, floral, animals and illustration into one of a kind plates for the wall and other things adorned with cute animals (but mostly bunnies) which are sold through her etsy shop.

Lyndsay also has an amazing online store called Candy Stripe Cloud (www.candystripecloud.com) which is a myriad off colourful, fun and cute products. She designs Candy Stripe Cloud jewellery, homewares and sells a million other adorable things there.

So we have very busy and very fun lives which we are lucky enough to share with one another through Made By White and as sisters.
 

S: It's hard to imagine you even having time to run Made By White on top of all these extra projects! Can you take us through the processes that you go through to get to get to an end product?

MBW: We usually start with an idea either one of us will come up with, usually Kelly will do a drawing of the idea/character, Lyndsay will then trace the drawing in illustrator, make the design work technically, and then we'll cut a sample. We'll look at the sample together, talk about if it works, and if its doesn't we'll make adjustments to size, shape, colour, materials etc until it does. Then when we think we have it right we'll make the product up in a small amount and make it available online through madebywhite.com and see what everyone else thinks!
 

S: Can you give us a bit of insight to the company structure of Made By White? Do you have a large team of employees or are you both still very hands on?

MBW: Made By White is literally just us, our very supportive boyfriends, our pets (kelly has a bunny and french bulldog, lyndsay has finches and hungry goldfish) and our at home workspaces! We are both very hands on and make and pack all our own orders, reply to all our own emails and just generally share our brand as best we can.
 

S: All of your pieces are handmade in Australia (by the two of you no less!). What challenges/triumphs have you faced not only manufacturing in Australia, but also having each of your pieces made by hand?

MBW: It obviously is very time consuming but important to us to make each piece by hand because this means we can put a little bit of love into everything we do. We also like to know we can ensure a quality, unique piece in each brooch, necklace or earring set we produce which is all made locally, and not mass produced. We think people do appreciate the specialness of each design and all the work we put into keeping our ideas new. And also we like to think buying locally handmade is a great way to ensure you support designers doing what they love, like us!
 

S: When starting a new body of work, where do you turn for inspiration and ideas?
 

MBW: We love to discover new animals, draw from our travel experiences and just basically look at everything we love and try to design jewellery around it. Sometimes we will see a baby animal and think, "that would be an amazing brooch!" or look at a fairytale we know and see what elements we can interpret and make our own. All our ideas are completely random and some are just based on something as small as a conversation we have together.
 

S: And lastly, what does a typical day in the Made By White studio involve?

MBW: We unfortunately don't have a studio, but Made By White lives in both our houses. On a typical day we might laser cut some pieces, make up a batch of brooches, glue 30 pairs of stud earrings for a stockist, pack orders from our website to go off to their new homes, write a blog and do a trip to the postoffice, (very importantly) picking up some coffees on the way for all of us. It's a busy but fun way to run a little brand together and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Many thanks to you both for taking the time to answer these questions. Shop online for Made By White's current range here!